When the World Changes in a Moment

Shane Warren

Sep 11

5 min read

AWARENESS STATEMENT

For Immediate Release

11 September 2026

AAMHP Public Statement - 25 Years After September 11

There are moments in human life when time seems to divide itself. There was what existed before, and then there is everything that came afterwards. For millions of people around the world, 11 September 2001 was one of those moments.

Twenty-five years ago, ordinary people began an ordinary Tuesday. They went to work, boarded aircraft, dropped children at school, answered telephones, bought coffee, planned meetings and assumed, quite reasonably, that the world they had woken into would remain broadly recognisable by the time they went to bed.

Within hours, that assumption was gone.

The attacks on New York, Washington and Flight 93 in Pennsylvania brought catastrophic loss of life and profound grief to families and communities directly affected. But their impact travelled much further. Images crossed the world in real time. People thousands of kilometres away watched events they could scarcely comprehend unfold on television screens. Politics changed. Security changed. Travel changed. Wars followed. Communities experienced fear and suspicion. For many people, some fundamental assumptions about safety and predictability changed as well.

On the 25th anniversary of September 11, the Australian Association of Mental Health Practitioners remembers those who lost their lives, those who were injured, the emergency and recovery workers who responded, the families and communities who carried the immediate loss, and those who continue to live with the physical and psychological consequences of that day.

But this anniversary also invites us to reflect on something broader about trauma itself.

Some moments stay with us

AAMHP Chair Shane Warren said major traumatic events can become markers through which people organise memory and understand the passage of their own lives.

“Most of us can identify moments when the world changed in an instant. Sometimes they are intensely personal such as a death, a diagnosis, an accident, a relationship ending. Sometimes the moment is shared by millions of people. September 11 was one of those extraordinary days when people across the world could feel history moving beneath their feet.” [Shane Warren]

Shane Warren said the significance of such events lies not only in what occurred at the time, but in the way they can continue shaping individuals, families, institutions and communities long afterwards.

“Trauma does not always announce itself loudly for twenty-five years. Sometimes it becomes woven quietly into the person, the family or the society that experienced it. People continue living. Communities rebuild. Children grow up. Life moves forward. Yet particular images, dates, sounds, places or world events can still connect us immediately with what happened before.” [Shane Warren]

Research and clinical understanding of trauma support that observation. Anniversary dates can operate as trauma reminders, sometimes bringing renewed grief, anxiety, physical responses or intrusive memories even many years after the original event. Public anniversaries can be especially powerful because media coverage, ceremonies and collective remembrance create concentrated reminders of what occurred.

This does not mean everybody affected by a traumatic event develops post-traumatic stress disorder, nor does remembering indicate that somebody has somehow failed to “move on”. Human responses to trauma vary enormously. Anniversaries can provoke distress, reflection, gratitude, connection, grief, meaning-making or several of these at once.

Trauma can have a very long shadow

Twenty-five years after September 11, its continuing health consequences make that point starkly.

The United States World Trade Center Health Program now serves more than 125,000 responders and survivors affected by the attacks and their aftermath. It monitors and treats a range of physical and mental-health conditions associated with 9/11 exposure, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety disorders and substance-use disorders.

The official 25th anniversary commemoration itself recognised this continuing story. For the first time, organisers added a seventh moment of silence specifically honouring people who have died from illnesses and injuries associated with September 11 and its aftermath.

AAMHP Secretary Susan Sandy said this continuing experience offers an important lesson for the way mental-health practitioners and communities understand trauma more generally.

“One of the mistakes we can make is imagining that time passing and healing are the same thing. Time matters, but people do not simply leave profound experiences behind because five, ten or twenty-five years have elapsed. We learn to carry experiences differently. We build lives around them. We develop new meanings, relationships and strengths. But important losses remain part of our story.” [Susan Sandy]

Susan Sandy said anniversaries can therefore call for sensitivity rather than assumptions about how someone “should” feel after so much time.

“For one person an anniversary may be a day of remembrance and gratitude. For somebody else it may bring grief very close again. Another person may feel surprisingly little and then feel guilty about that. There is no compulsory emotional response to remembrance. Good mental-health practice gives people permission to encounter these moments as they actually experience them.” [Susan Sandy]

Remembering should deepen our capacity to care

There is another lesson worth carrying from September 11.

In the immediate aftermath of catastrophe, human beings often demonstrate an extraordinary capacity to care for one another. People run towards danger. Strangers offer help. Communities organise. Professionals work beyond exhaustion. Food arrives. Doors open. People telephone one another simply to ask, Are you safe?

Over time, however, public attention inevitably moves elsewhere. The less visible work begins then.

Trauma recovery is often found not in dramatic acts but in years of relationships, treatment, community, companionship, patience, practical support and opportunities to make meaning from what happened. This is true after terrorism and disaster, but it is equally true in the quieter traumas that never become news stories.

Shane Warren said remembrance has value when it makes us more attentive to the people living around us now.

“If remembering September 11 teaches us anything useful about mental health, perhaps it is that we should not wait for catastrophe before caring deeply about one another. We know human beings can show remarkable compassion in the hours after the world changes. The challenge is to practise some of that same compassion during the ordinary weeks, months and years that follow.” [Shane Warren]

This is especially important for mental-health practitioners.

Trauma-informed practice is not simply knowledge about diagnostic criteria. It is an understanding that behaviour has history, that safety can be disrupted, that people may carry experiences we cannot immediately see, and that recovery rarely follows somebody else’s preferred timetable.

It also reminds us to resist defining people entirely through the worst thing that has happened to them.

People affected by trauma are not simply collections of symptoms. They continue to love, work, parent, laugh, contribute, struggle, recover, remember and grow. Trauma may become part of a life story without being allowed to become the whole story.

Twenty-five years later

At the National September 11 Memorial this year, family members once again read aloud the names of those who were lost. Seven periods of silence marked the attacks, the collapse of the towers and, now, the lives subsequently lost through related illness. The annual Tribute in Light once again sent two columns of light into the New York sky.

The rituals are simple. Their persistence matters. They tell us that remembering does not require remaining frozen in the past. Sometimes remembering is precisely how societies acknowledge that the past continues to have a place within the present.

Twenty-five years after September 11, AAMHP honours those who passed over, those who survived, those who responded, and those whose lives were changed in ways the rest of the world may never fully know.

We also acknowledge everyone for whom a particular date divides life into before and after.

Trauma can run deep.

Memory can run deep.

So too can human resilience.

Perhaps one of the responsibilities that comes with remembering is equally enduring:

To notice more carefully.

To listen more patiently.

And to care for one another more deeply.

Not only when the world changes in a moment, but throughout all the ordinary days that follow.

Media Contact:

Shane Warren, Chair

Susan Sandy, Secretary